The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today
that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from the Vietnam War, have been
identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors.
He is Staff Sgt. Maurice H. Moore, of Baltimore, Md., U.S. Army. He will be buried in
Baltimore on Dec. 4.
Representatives from the Army met with Moore’s next-of-kin to explain the recovery and
identification process, and to coordinate interment with military honors on behalf of the Secretary
of the Army.
On May 12, 1968, North Vietnamese forces overran the Kham Duc Special Forces camp
and its surrounding observation posts in Quang Nam-Da Nang Province (formerly Quang Tin
Province), South Vietnam. Moore was one of the 17 U.S. servicemen unaccounted-for after the
survivors evacuated the camp. Search and recovery efforts at the site in 1970 succeeded in
recovering remains of five of the 17 men. A sixth man was returned alive during Operation
Homecoming in 1973 after having been held prisoner of war by the North Vietnamese.
Between 1993 and 2006, joint U.S./Vietnam teams, led by the Joint POW/MIA
Accounting Command (JPAC), conducted eight investigations and four excavations in the
vicinity of the camp site. The team interviewed former North Vietnamese officers and soldiers
who participated in the battle. Some recalled seeing the bodies of U.S. servicemen near one of
the observation posts, and U.S. eyewitness accounts placed Moore near the post.
During an excavation conducted in 1998, two U.S. servicemen who survived the battle
accompanied JPAC to help locate the observation posts, but found no evidence of human remains.
Later excavations conducted in the area yielded human remains, identification media and personal
effects for Moore and several other Army soldiers, including Maj. Frederick J. Ransbottom and
Staff Sgt. William E. Skivington, Jr., who were identified in 2006.
Among other forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence, scientists from
JPAC and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory also used mitochondrial DNA in the
identification of the remains.
For additional information on the Defense Department’s mission to account for missing
Americans, visit the DPMO web site at www.dtic.mil/dpmo or call (703) 699-1169.